Fallen Angel
by Misty Rius
Summary: He searched for her beside him. He really did. Yet, all he saw was the dark. Why? Why would she lie to him? Why would she let him fall through into this insane nightmare? Why did his angel leave him alone...?


He drifted lightly to the floor, not quite sure where he was, but not caring terribly either.

The boy knew when things were only a dream. You couldn't get hurt here.

He alighted on the ground, seeing that he was in a large cathedral-like room with marble flooring. The only source of light came out of a neatly carved circular hole in the ceiling, which projected the soft beams of sunlight slantways across the floor while leaving other parts of the room in shadow.

He landed just outside the circle of light just so that he was shadowed but would still be visible to the unaided eye from halfway across the room.

The minute the boy touched down, soft tinkling sounds that could undoubtedly be identified as those born of a harp drifted to his ears.

He looked around, ear twitching as he tried to find the source of the music.

Finally, he found it in the form of a white-clad black-and-grey raccoon sitting on the ground just to the left of the center of the room, bathed completely in pure sunlight.

The boy tried to call out to her, but found that he was mute. Again, he didn't truly seem to care, for even if he couldn't speak to her, she had a warm aura about her that suggested that she'd be kind.

Before he could give any thoughts to why she was there, he found that he was already approaching her, one hand held out before him.

She stopped playing the minute he stepped within three feet of her, and turned to face him, a golden diadem on her head glittering along with her wide blue eyes.

She didn't appear to be much older than he was.

She put the golden harp to her chest and gently ran her fingers along it, releasing a light A chord into the air before speaking in a high, child-like voice, _"For the moment you believe that life shall go on."_

The raccoon stood, harp still held to chest with one hand, and stepped forward, her floor-length gown swaying as she gently placed her golden-gloved hand against the boy's.

_"Then you think more and those notions are gone."_

The minute she said this, the boy fell through the floor. He wasn't drifting this time.

He hit the floor on his back, lightly concerned but not allowing it to get to him.

_Huh, what was that all about?_

He sat up and looked around. From what he could tell, the gray, narrow, stony hallway he currently was in didn't have an apparent end and appeared to be lit by the softly luminescing gray mist that lightly coated the floor.

He glanced up, and there the raccoon stood, outfit unchanged with the harp still held against her chest. She herself seemed to give off a colorless light that revealed the intricate, probably meaningless patterns on the wall on either side.

She plucked two strings, giving off an F and an A at the same time.

_"You begin to wonder what they'll do."_

She turned and began to walk slowly down the hallway, looking down as the mist seemed to consume her.

The boy watched her leave before standing and making his own way down the passage, noticing faintly that the mist rose to knee-level.

He still couldn't speak, and the movement of his tails did nothing for him.

But he didn't mind too much. Nothing that bad could happen, right?

He was startled as the high voice spoke again from next to him, the raccoon suddenly walking beside him and facing foward as she pulled and released the string that played C.

_"When before they've done so many things with you."_

At this, she turned to him and waved the arm that wasn't holding the instrument in front of him, causing the mist to swirl around him and completely cloud his visibility.

_What does she mean...?_

When the boy was finally able to see, he found that he was in a far more dimly-lit passageway than before. This time, it was a staircase, the side going up being completely pitch black while the side going down was dimly lit by some sort of glow emanating from the ivy on the stone walls on either side.

He noted that this particular passage was narrower than the previous one, and found himself a bit more perturbed.

Of course, it had to be a dream. Nothing could turn _too_ out of control.

He hesitantly began to make his way down the steps, nearly slipping several times because of their small size and peculiar dampness.

Suddenly, he began to hear something in the distance: A rhythmic _pit-pit-pit._

The sound intensified as he continued down the stairway, shivering for a reason he couldn't fathom.

He tried to call out, but no sound came forth, stopping itself in his throat. His tails wouldn't move, no matter how hard he struggled to force them into a circular motion.

The unorthodox rhythm began an uneasy accelerando, and so did his heart rate.

Nothing was going to happen, this was pure fantasy. It_ couldn't _be happening. It was _impossible._

Then, the sonance seemed to manifest itself into a black-and-gray shadow sprinting up the staircase, brown leather boots hitting the ground as each _pit_ sounded.

Miss Shadow stopped, looking at the visibly unnerved boy with what he used his shaky reasoning to name fear clouding her eyes.

She looked different from how she did back when he first arrived and she was graced with sunlight. She now exhibited a short, tattered navy blue garment with several small satchels and a miniscule bronze diadem attached to the rotting rope she used as a belt.

Her voice was more mature and desperate-sounding as her brown-gloved hands pressed a tiny sack into his hand and she hastily gasped, _"You can't help but worry if they'll stray."_

At that, she dashed off up the stairs and into the black, the increasing volume of each step twisting what he knew about how sound worked.

The _pitting_ seemed to pound away and reverberate from within his very mind as he began to quicken his pace down the stairs.

No speech. No tail-spinning. Now, the constant pounding. Perhaps nothing would get him if he just thought about the end. If he just pressed on and kept moving.

This was what fueled his rush to the base of the stairwell.

A voice could be heard calling to him, and he looked back to spot the raccoon once again, one foot resting on a higher stair than the other, staring back at him with a look that indicated that she wanted to warn him.

He saw her mouth move, and she ran back up again.

The echo slammed into him, _"You're straining over the secrets they may be keeping away."_

He covered his ears as he continued his mad dash to the bottom.

_What is she **talking **about?_

After what seemed like an agonizing eon, the stairs gave way to a slightly more narrow hallway. Doorways lined either side, fog pouring out of them as if forbidding any outsiders from entering the doors it obscured.

In the midst of it, the raccooon stood, staring blankly at the boy as he stopped his run. She bent down, momentarily hidden by the smokescreen before coming back up with a cherry blossom and a silver dagger.

She lightly tossed the flower upward, immediately proceeding to use the dagger to shred it to petals in midair.

The petals carressed him as they drifted by, along with the same sound of desperation softly calling, _"Your peace of mind is stolen like by a Thief of the Night."_

She scurried through the unknown, leaving him with seemingly no other option but to follow her. As he passed, he tried to make a grab for one of the glowing light pink petals, but the evaded his grasp and faded away with tiny dying glimmers of light.

The smoke provided no consolation, it only seemed to make him shiver more.

Blinded. Head pounding. No tail-spinning. Mute. He just...had to keep...moving. It would end eventually. It _had_ to end.

That's all he had to keep him from losing his composure.

Just ahead, he could make out a faint light that caused the smoke around him to give off an eerie blue iridescence.

He stopped before it, part of him not wanting to move forward. Nevertheless, he managed to force himself forth, finding that the source of the queer light was a grotesquely adorned mirror that took up a large portion of the dead-end he now stood before.

He studied it, placing a hand on its dirty surface. It gave the impression of formerly being grand and majestic; or at least, somewhere in a lost past. Now, though...

He gasped as the tainted reflection of the raccoon came into view, stray blossom petals floating about her like apparations.

_"As you desperately question if leaving was right."_

She lifted a shaking hand, moving her palm apprehensively toward his. His hand twitched her own connected with it through the glass.

_What...? Why...?_

All at once, he felt himself filled with a positively otherworldly feeling. It swelled within him, taking him over. He stared down the grimy reflection, an irresistable urge mounting within, overtaking him in one moment and driving him to snatch his hand back, rear up his right leg, and kick out at the mirror with an angered cry, shattering it and the frightened girl inside.

Time slowed.

Each shard of glass pushed slowly through the air, as if they wanted to hit the ground as soon as possible, but were being restrained by the cruel space.

The boy himself felt the otherworldly feeling pass, replaced by a sickening pit in his stomach. He felt cold and filled with terror, dreading what would come next.

There was a moment of complete blackness before he abruptly found himself on his knees in a third hallway, both walls only inches away from his shoulders. Behind him was a wall, and the entire remainder of the endless passageway was lined with mirrors that were only slightly less decorated than the one from the last room. The only light was an untraceable white glow coming from the tops of the mirrors.

In an almost trance-like state, he pulled himself to his feet and started walking.

There was no denying the fear that began to oppress him now. Things were beginning to spin out of control. This _had_ to stop. He _had_ to escape. This was no longer a dream.

It was a _nightmare._

He stood up, noticing a black form a short way down.

The boy stumbled forward, putting a hand out just as he had the first time. Maybe this was someone who could give him freedom. Salvation.

When he got close, he froze, stunned as the figure turned around to reveal the raccoon. Her eyes didn't reflect contentment, fear, or desperation. No, they reflected an inhuman nothingness.

Insanity, perhaps? It was all too likely. But why?

She stood, an unnatural grin cracking across her face as she advanced toward him.

He backed up, only to hit the wall. He wanted to scream, to banish the fear that clouded all of his systems, but nothing came.

She chuckled softly in the ethereal sort of style that force-fed a larger pit into his stomach.

_"You watch helplessly as their lives go along."_

She raised a hand, only partially gloved in black so that it exposed inch-long razor-sharp claws.

How desperately he wanted to screech as she brought her hand down diagonally in front of him and caused him to close his eyes tightly. However, all he felt was something being snatched from his hand.

When he mustered the courage to open his eyes again, the boy caught the tail end of the Shadow Girl as she scittered away on all fours, the sack the Thief Girl passed on to him caught between her teeth.

He slapped the wall behind him, not sure whether the move was out of exasperation of being stolen from or a vain attempt to find another way out. Either way, it certainly didn't achieve the latter goal.

No speech. No tail-spinning. No clear thinking. No sight. No turning back. There was no denying that the feeling trying to press him into a full-scale panic was the nasty demon of Fear.

He ran forward now, breathing hard as he struggled in vain to calm himself and convince himself that he would wake up to the sweet, sweet sunlight that morning brought. If he would just keep running for a_ little_ longer...

The boy glanced to either side of him, only seeing the repeated, unhelpful reflection his own horror-distorted features.

_Wait! What was that?_

He skidded himself to a halt and backed toward another mirror, eyes wide. He gasped and covered his mouth as his blue met the blue of a different shade.

The raccoon girl stood on the other side of the glass, mimicking the boy with hand over her mouth and her own strangely hunched-over posture. When she took her hand away, that same unsettling smile was revealed as she turned toward him with a savage growl and a widened malicious grin.

_"Your mind loudly nags that leaving was wrong."_ She snarled before doing the supposedly impossible.

He threw himself back against the other side of the hall, mouth wide open and emitting a tortured and barely audible squeaking noise as she shot forward out of the filthy reflective surface with claws flailing viciously at him.

A smoky blackness flooded his vision before disappearing almost as soon as it came.

His heart pounded as his breath came in heavy heaves. It seemed a struggle just to stand now.

_This makes no sense!_

This was nothing short of someone else's sadistic vision. How could his own mind spawn such a thing...?

_Just keep moving_...he just had to move ahead and finish this. At least, that's what his fleeting hope _predicted_ would happen.

The boy dared not look anywhere but forward, fearful of the next catastrophe that would become the consequence of straying and doing anything else.

Finally, it seemed he arrived at the end of the Passage of Darkness, light mist beginning to gather around him as he faced the mirror on the final wall.

Was this really it? Yet another mirror? Perhaps if he broke it again...

No, wait, what was that above it? A short, wide platform sticking out from the wall? Why...?

He abruptly came to a halt, wanting to advance forward but finding himself paralyzed. No. _No!_

He had to end this monster of a delusion! He was so _close!_

Whatever was gripping him in place forced his head upwards to face the platform again, this time revealing the raccoon as she turned around to face him with that same crack over her face that could only be described as psychotic. A burst of lightning exploded behind her, revealing the atrociously frayed bottom of her ragged black dress in silhouette and causing him to wince.

It was then that he noticed an even more horrifying sight than the demented girl standing above the mirror; namely, what was _in_ the mirror.

Within the reflection stood the most haunting memory from his past, something he'd tried so fiercely to forget, but found himself unable to even after two years.

It was then that he was able to scream. To eject all the fear that had been suffocating him for what seemed like so many eternities. However, it didn't help him feel any less afraid.

If anything, the emotion only seemed to control him more.

The screech took the form of one word: _"Cosmo!"_

The Seedrian in the mirror appeared just as afraid as he was, pity in her eyes as she looked down at the boy she once loved. Her hand went against the glass, looking every bit as if she wanted to escape as desperately as he did.

It looked as if she were trying to say something, but he heard nothing as his gaze was forced upward to the other girl.

Her snicker intensified into an all-out fit of maniacal laughter as she held up the spoils she stole from him and removed the item from the bag, revealing a tiny glass diadem.

_"All you can do,"_ She snarled, kneeling and lifting the crown into the air above her, _"Is try to survive."_

There was another howl of laughter as she slammed the trinket into the mirror, shattering both.

The boy shook his head slowly as the bits of the glass tiara sounded their icy _tink-tink-tink's _onto the frigid stone ground and spiderweb cracks were sent across his angel's delicate features.

"No!" The boy squealed, still entombed in his standing paralysis. "N-_NO! _C-Cosmo! _Cosmo! Come back!"_

The plant girl's expression suddenly melted into a blank stare as she allowed her hand to fall to her side and she stepped back, the bits of mirror to which she was confined falling off little by little until the entire glass structure abruptly collapsed, leaving white, ghost-like flower petals to flutter toward the panic-stricken victim.

The minute one brushed along his cheek, he collapsed to his knees, howling with anguish.

The problem here:_ He didn't want to._ As much as the pain inside of him grew, he felt as if its release were being poorly enacted by someone else.

No tail-spinning. No clear sight. No clear thought. No turning back. _No control._

Everything was real. It was too real. The pain, the unadulterated fear, the numbness that began to eat away at him from the inside out. He had to escape, but _how?_

His head was jerked upwards to face the raccoon one last time as she drew something from behind her: A bow and a silver arrow.

As she notched the arrow and drew back the bow, she delivered the final line with that same psychotic grin splitting her once innocent and childlike features.

_"As you wait for Insanity to eat you alive!"_

At this, the arrow was released.

So greatly did the boy wish for that weapon to end him. For it to pierce into him and finish this sick, twisted game that was his life; or was it his mind?

The point was, he wanted to escape, and that shining, pointed hope that darted through the air at what seemed like an agonizingly slow pace appeared the only way to do it.

If only he could move into its path.

It instead inserted itself into the stone just in front of him, taunting him via the crack it caused. All of the mirrors were instantaneously broken, and black smoke poured out from behind them, trying to drown him as utter nothingness started to swarm his vision.

This heartache...this pain...this cold sensation that forced itself upon him...

It was all real. His regrets were attempting to suffocate him. That was the only explanation that could come to him as Logic finally and completely died.

All he could hear was the fatal, lost laughter of the Goddess of Insanity as his thoughts and feelings all went black...

**/*|*\**

In the moonlit room of the young Miles Prower, a ten-year-old kitsune sat bolt upright, cold sweat dotting his face as he let out a soft shout.

He frantically grasped his blanket and pulled it toward him, getting no consolation from its otherwise warm folds as his breath and heartbeat hammered away. When he stopped panicking and realized where he was, he sighed before putting both tails in front of him and doing the next thing he thought to do: weep.

He shook his head and dug his face into his namesakes as he once again thought of _her-_ something he did many times even after so long.

Why did his dreams insist on reminding him of what he did? Why, despite her consolations before he had to...let her go, did he continue to feel so miserable?

He faintly considered waking up Sonic, but decided against it. As much as his big brother was always there for him, his calming words were inevitably going to have no effect.

The fox boy looked up and turned to face out the window, only seeing the darkness outside.

_You said you'd be right beside me._

_Where did you go?_

_Please don't leave me._

_I don't want to be alone._

_Please..._

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Misty here with what I guess is my first truly dark-toned story. It's based off of a poem that I wrote after receiving some rather...discomforting news from my hometown.<strong>

**Now, I know that a raccoon running around reciting poetry isn't exactly the worst thing that could happen to someone, but it's what I thought of when I wrote the poem, and the Tailsmo tragedy was the first thing that came to mind as a background situation.**

**I suppose that you could call this the Yin to _I See You There_'s Yang.**

**Speaking of which, thanks to Gamewizard2008 for reviewing that poem, and as well EpicShadowdragon for reviewing _and_ for favoriting it as well as me.**

**Disclaimer I: I don't own Sonic the Hedgehog. If you're looking for the true owners, ask SEGA. I'm sure they'll be happy to assist you.**

**Disclaimer II: I do, however, own the poem and the crazy raccoon.**

**Please review! Don't burn me down!**


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